hecate-maintenance

---

name: hecate-maintenance description: Use for routine repo upkeep: recurring health checks, branch/worktree cleanup, stale docs or product-language drift, dependency drift review, and maintenance PR prep.

Hecate maintenance skill

Routine upkeep should be boring, isolated, and easy to review. Use this skill when the task is maintenance-shaped rather than feature-shaped.

When to use

• Running recurring health checks or preparing a maintenance PR.
• Cleaning up stale local worktrees or branches.
• Checking whether merged work can be pruned safely.
• Removing stale docs, screenshots, anchors, product language, or agent guidance.
• Reviewing dependency drift across Go, UI, website, Tauri/Rust, Docker, or GitHub Actions.
• Keeping CI/local verification recipes aligned.
• Updating scheduled nightly maintenance checks and report behavior.

Read first

• ../../tasks/maintenance.md — cadence, hygiene rules, and maintenance-specific verification.
• ../../core/verification.md — broader verification ladder when maintenance touches risky runtime surfaces.

Default flow

1. Start from current master, preferably in a fresh maintenance worktree.
2. Run git fetch origin master --prune before starting a new maintenance PR.
3. Run just branches-report when cleanup might involve branches or worktrees.
4. Make only maintenance-scoped edits. Keep behavior changes and dependency bumps in separate PRs unless the operator explicitly asks to combine them.
5. Run just docs-check for docs-only maintenance or just maintenance for broader upkeep.
6. Summarize what was checked, what was intentionally skipped, and which cleanup candidates still need operator judgment.

For nightly workflow changes, run just maintenance-nightly when feasible. If that is too expensive for the turn, run just maintenance plus the narrow script/workflow checks and say exactly what was skipped.

Guardrails

• Treat just branches-report as evidence, not permission to delete.
• Do not remove a worktree with uncommitted changes.
• Do not delete a branch with an open PR or unique commits not represented on origin/master.
• Do not let stale-product-language cleanup rewrite technical terms that still describe real internals, such as the gateway HTTP path or gateway OTel spans.
• Do not hide flaky external URL failures inside the hard-fail local gate. Use just check-links-external when external rot is the task.

Output shape

1. Scope. What kind of maintenance this is: checks, docs drift, branch hygiene, dependency drift, or CI parity.
2. Actions. Files changed or cleanup performed.
3. Verification. Exact commands and results.
4. Residual risk. Skipped expensive gates, open PRs/branches left alone, or external links that need human judgment.